OK I Suck, But Bad Bike Racks Suck Worse

I’m getting some (polite) crap from folks who want more rants and less silence. Fair enough. I’m from, New York, ya know, so just be careful what you ask for….

OK, today’s rant is about bike parking racks: most of them suck, and are a disservice to cyclists. What’s ironic is that some of the worst designs are the ones that bike shops carry. I suspect that is because the same things that make a rack easy (cheap) to ship also makes their design lousy. Obviously, nothing related to security should be bolt-together. I tell colleagues in the bike industry that they wouldn't ever put their name on a lousy department store “bike”, so why sell the Huffy-equivalent in bike racks? I’m dismayed that people in the bike industry often don’t know what makes a good bike rack. It makes me suspect that they don’t use bikes for transportation. Yeah, bikes are fun, but they are legit transportation too, and they/their riders deserve to have good, secure parking.


Maybe It’s For Job Security?
One of the most ubiquitous and crappy racks out there are the “wheel-bender” variants. Such racks hold bikes by their wheels, and should the bikes fall over (which they do because of poor design), the wheels get damaged. Also, they are usually very difficult to use high-security U-locks on them to protect both the wheels and frame. Maybe they help sell more replacement wheels? Personally, I’d rather sell replacements wheel because folks wore out their wheels from lots of use, not because they toasted their wheels in a crappy parking rack. If you see racks like that, be sure to put your bike parallel to it so that the whole bike frame is supported. Some folks might not understand and think you are a jerk, and that’s a shame, but your ride is important, so do it and never mind the haters.

Wheelbenders are so common, that they dominate results of a Google image search for “bicycle parking rack”.



Candy Coated Crap
Wow, how’s that phrase for rant-like? Well, unfortunately, lots of nice-looking racks actually are poorly designed. So-called “ribbon racks” are seen as attractive my designers or architects because of their aesthetic lines. Aesthetics are a secondary concern. Function is the main goal here. Ribbon racks are intended by manufacturers to be use in a perpendicular fashion, much like wheel-benders, and they do not support bikes properly either. If you need to use them, again, park parallel to them.

Think twice about gimmicky-looking racks. The “cutesification” of things usually results in a worse product, I think. No need to “suffer for fashion”. Decent, nice-looking racks do exist.

Better Mousetrap
So what makes a good rack? Well, it should support the whole bike and not just a wheel. Also, the rack should be tall enough to support the bike near the top of the frame, so bikes don’t tumble over it. I really like the simple “A-racks” or inverted-U-racks. They are low-profile and can be used individually in pubic areas, or, where space allows, can be installed in a gang. A group of angled ones help keep the bikes low-profile which can be helpful in certain installations. When connected by plates at the bottom of the hoops, the rack can be self-standing, though premanently fastening a rack to the ground is important for security.

Cha-Ching’s The Thing
One problem with racks like these is that they are expensive to ship. The alternative is to have them welded locally, which helps your local economy. Maybe ye local welding shop will help defray costs for making racks are donated to the community. They gotta eat too, though, so don’t be bummed if they can’t swing a deal.


So Close and Yet So Far – Or Not Far Enough?
Good design is only part of the issue, though. Good placement is another major factor. Time and again I see good racks installed poorly, such a Cora rack right up against a wall, cutting its capacity in half. Cora is one of those companies that “gets it” though and provides installation guidance that points out how placement affects access. That was cool of them.


Bike Parking Standards
More communities are requiring bike parking as part of their development codes. That’s great as long as they specify:

- good rack designs to be used/prohibit bad ones
- proper location (e.g. near building entry/exit and under adequate rain shelter)
- proper installation is made explicit (to maintain capacity)


But It’s Just a Bunch of Words
Standards are only useful though if they understood and enforced. Your community’s officials and planners might need education on how to maximize the rack's usability. Often, they don't bike and have no idea how their work affects end-usability. If they don’t get it or don’t buy in, don’t expect to get good results on the ground. Often bike racks are one of the last details to get installed in a development, and the installers might have no idea about cycling, the rest of the development project or the code requirements (if there even are any). I’m not saying bike racks are on-par with the seismic safety of a building in terms of importance in code, but it’s not rocket science either for goodness sakes.

The Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals has a good resource on bike parking that can be helpful for educating people. You might even want to send this link to your local bike shop to help ensure they know what makes good parking (you’d be surprised): http://www.bicyclinginfo.org/pdf/bikepark.pdf.

OK, that's all (for now). I got a doozy of a rant in store for next time.... Thanks to the folks who bugged me to stop being a slacker.

Anti-Helmet Law Rant

Sometimes cyclists complain about other cyclists who don’t wear helmets. While I wear a helmet and would like every cyclist to do so as well, I am not in favor of forcing him or her to do so. Here is an editorial/rant I wrote about it:

Helmets don't prevent "accidents" (that term isn’t even right — they are collisions, not accidents). Rider skill, rider and driver adherence to the law, and proper facility design are what reduce the rate of collisions. Helmets might affect the frequency and severity of cyclist head INJURY, but only if properly fit, adjusted and used. Alas, helmets are more complicated to use than seat belts (and even those are not perfect solutions for all, thus we have child seats and boosters). This is evidenced by the scores of people who wear helmets that are ill-fitting, improperly adjusted, or both. I include members of bike clubs in that observation, so being an enthusiast still is no guarantee of proper helmet use (and therefore proper protection). Moreover, wearing a piece of polystyrene on one's head is no guarantee that traffic laws will be followed, and does not signal to drivers anything significant about the competency of the rider. Many helmet-wearing cyclists routinely break traffic laws in such a way that might endanger themselves and others.

If you are anything like most other cyclists I know, you didn't wear a helmet when you first learned how to ride a bike. You weren't an idiot then, and neither are today's cyclists without helmets. I can think of a few reasons why a cyclist might not wear a helmet and none of them indicate much of anything about their worth as people or even if they are “serious” cyclists, or worthy of respect by drivers. I doubt anyone would call the tens of thousands of daily bike commuters in countries like the Netherlands, where helmet use is low, as idiots.

Coming down on fellow cyclists who don't wear helmets is a waste of our energy at least, and perhaps even counter-productive to cycling as a whole. Cyclists are a minority in terms of transportation mode split. Due to the built environment and disparity in power between even an elite racer and the humblest of cars, combined with our culture's lack of patience and compassion (read “patriarchal cruelty and propensity for road rage”), cyclists may even be considered an oppressed minority of sorts. To then attack other cyclists for not wearing helmets seems, therefore, like internalized oppression. Would that we could get respect from all other road users simply by donning helmets! I'm sorry to say that won't do it any more than sending all women to college will stop sexism (because both oppressions are deeply rooted and institutionalized, involving more than just the oppressed party — the oppressors must change too). Additionally, no cyclist should ever feel or be made to feel responsible for the actions of other cyclists; there is no such corollary pressure on drivers. Buying into this double standard only perpetuates cyclist oppression.

Instead, we should all work to make sure that society is properly providing what cycling as a transportation mode and form of recreation really needs. Pete Lagerwey, Seattle's Bike Coordinator, is fond of saying (and I of repeating), “Good facility design invites right behavior.” True, but no facility will always prevent the ignorant or even willful disregard of traffic laws. That is where safety education and, eventually, enforcement come in (though 100% compliance will always remain an asymptotic goal). As a bike safety advocate I promote helmet use yet fight mandatory helmet laws despite the fact that as a bicycle retailer, I'd make money from such a law. Why? Because I dislike the oversimplification used in rationalizing such behavior control — helmets don't prevent collisions (I am far from a libertarian, though, guns DO kill people). I'd rather see bicycle safety education institutionalized in schools than profit from legislation that did nothing to educate cyclists (and the eventual drivers most of them also become) about how to safely use and share the road. Most cyclists don't even know how to properly use their front brake, let alone how to properly negotiate a busy, multi-lane street while preparing to turn left. I think that properly educated, mature cyclists will usually chose to wear helmets. As a bonus, they themselves will know how to fit and adjust their helmets. This provides a bigger benefit than not providing education yet forcing cyclists to wear helmets under the threat of a fine.

I'm far more comfortable with seeing good safe and legal cycling form coming from a rider without a helmet, than the reverse. I'd rather see an educated, helmeted rider, but I'm not going to berate a cyclist for not being one, and neither should you.

I Coulda Been a Contenda

Several years ago, I needed to improvise a tool to work on some cartridge bearing hubs -- if you press on the inner race of the cartridge you will ruin it. I came up with a good idea and sent it in as a submission to a mechanic tip contest held by The Third Hand/Loose Screws (a mail-order bike part and tool biz). I never heard squat back -- I'm pretty sure they took my idea and made TENS of dollars with it, but I still like them anyway. Moreover, I still like my idea. Here it is:

While overhauling a cartridge bearing hubset, I realized that I didn’t have a tool for installing the new cartridges. Wanting to press the new cartridges in (rather than hammer them in), I needed a tool that would to guide along the hub’s axle while only contacting the outer race of the new cartridge (a la Specialized’s cartridge installation tool that looks like a cartridge with a protruding outer race). Lo and behold, the old cartridge slipped perfectly into the backside of a 1” headset locknut, making a unit that would satisfy both criteria. It worked like a dream as the axle locknuts drove the new bearings into the hub shell.


I then wondered what cartridges the other size locknuts might accommodate and made a table with the locknut inner diameters, various common cartridge bearings and their outer diameters, whether a certain locknut will accommodate the bearing. A little machining (of the locknut’s inner diameter) is usually required for a fit, but using an aluminum locknut makes that an easy task. This tool is cheap and will last a long time, so press on and roll smoothly!

OlyBikes Blog Intro

This blog was created by the folks at OlyBikes, a small, independent bike shop in Olympia, WA. We like talking about bikes as much as riding and working on them, and have a lot to share, so we created a blog. Hope you enjoy it. BTW, we would like to hear from other bike freaks out there and if you have some cool thoughts or ideas you'd like to share, send them to us and we'll post them.